This is the first English-language book on controversial female director Catherine Breillat, whose films include Romance, A ma soeur (Fat Girl), Anatomy of Hell and most recently, The Last Mistress. This volume explores the director's complex relation to religion and to feminism, and it examines the differences between Breillat's films and patriarchal pornography, engaging in detailed analysis of her intimate scenes between men and women. Keesey also discusses the literature, films, paintings and photos that have influenced Breillat's work, and extends this to show how Breillat's films have...

Jacques Rivette is perhaps the best-kept secret of French cinema. A founding figure in the New Wave, and at the centre of the *Cahiers du cinema* team, he developed into one of the most unusual and adventurous French directors of the last sixty years, yet his work remains little-known in comparison with his contemporaries, and this study is the first in English to look at the full span of his career. Starting with his decisively influential film criticism of the 1950s, it moves from the New Wave through the complex, experimental films of the 1970s to the challenging, playful dramas which...

Laurent Cantet is of one France's leading contemporary directors. In a series of important films, including Human Resources, Time Out, Heading South, The Class and Foxfire, he takes stock of the modern world from the workplace, through the schoolroom and the oppressive small town to the world of international sex tourism. His films drive the hidden forces that weigh on individuals and groups into view but also show characters who are capable of reflection and reaction. If the films make their protagonists rethink their place in the world, they also challenge the positions of the viewer and...

Bertrand Tavernier is widely recognized as the leading French filmmaker of his generation. Both a consummate artist and a controversial public figure, he is a passionate advocate for social causes and also a tireless defender of world cinema in general and the French cinematic heritage in particular. Lynn Higgins' book offers a guided tour through Tavernier's oeuvre, taking into account both its prodigious diversity and its unifying themes. It explores his use of genre and adaptation, his work with actors and his affection for characters, his treatment of France's colonial history, his...

This is the first full-length study of the films of Francois Ozon, director of such diverse films as 8 femmes, Swimming Pool, 5x2 and Les amants criminels. Andrew Asibong's passionate and critical analysis focuses on the extent to which Ozon's seemingly light touch never ceases to engage with the fundamentally weighty issue of existential transformation, a transformation that affects of both his protagonists and his audiences. A central question emerges: what is at stake, cinematically, ethically and politically, in Ozon's alternatively utopian and cynical flirtation with the construction and...

Though long ignored or dismissed by film critics and scholars, Marcel Pagnol (1895-1974) was among the most influential auteurs of his era. This comprehensive overview of Pagnol's career, the first ever published in English, highlights his unique place in French cinema as a self-sufficient writer-producer-director and his contribution to the long-term evolution of filmmaking in a broader European context. In addition to reassessing the converted playwright's controversial prioritisation of speech over image, the book juxtaposes Pagnol's sunny rural melodramas with the dark, urban variety of...

This book provides a scholarly yet accessible account of the work of Marcel Carne, one of the great directors of the classical French cinema and the key figure behind the poetic realist film movement of the 1930s. His films, a number of which were made in collaboration with the poet-turned-scriptwriter, Jacques Prevert, include such well known works as Le quai des brumes, Le jour se leve and Les enfants du paradis. As the first book to be written on Carne for a number of years, it offers a fresh perspective on his cinema, particularly through a re-examination of his post-war work - although...

Placing Robbe-Grillet's filmic oeuvre in the related contexts of both his novelistic work and the different historical and cultural periods in which his films were made, from the early 1960s to the present, the book traces lines of influence and continuity throughout his work which is shown to exhibit a consistent preoccupation with an identifiable body of themes, motifs and structures. Close readings of all the films are skilfully combined with a thematic approach, ranging across the entire filmic corpus. The book also exceptionally contains chapters on cinematography and technique....

This book is the first ever English-language study of Julien Duvivier (1896-1967), once considered one of the world's great filmmakers. It provides new contextual and analytical readings of his films that identify his key themes and techniques, trace patterns of continuity and change, and explore critical assessments of his work over time. His career began in the silent era and ended as the French New Wave was winding down. In between, Duvivier made over sixty films in a long and at times difficult career. He was adept at literary adaptation, biblical epic, and film noir, and this...

Saccharine for some, poignant for others, Jacques Demy's 'enchanted' world is familiar to generations of French audiences accustomed to watching Christmas repeats of his fairytale Peau d'ane (1970) or seeing Catherine Deneuve and Francoise Dorleac prance and pirouette in Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1966). Demy achieved international recognition with Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1963), which was awarded the Palme d'Or at Cannes. However, beneath the apparently sugary coating of his films lie more philosophical reflections on some of the most pressing issues that preoccupy Western societies,...